“No other success can compensate for failure in the home.” ~ David O. McKay
What? Not even rocket science or brain surgery? No, not for the children of the rocket scientist or brain surgeon, and not for any child. From whom do children, especially young children, learn best? Nature has shown us time and again that children usually learn best from their own parents. Many parents of gifted children have intrinsically understood this truth, which may be part of the reason their children advance ahead.
Glynne Sutcliffe (M.A., Dip. Ed.) says, “Remember Suzuki and his violin lessons! Parents are the natural first teachers of young children. Children learn almost everything of significance by watching and absorbing what their parents (or parent substitutes) do, feel and think… Young children need a lot of one-to-one time with loving adults willing to open up the world to them. If they are in child care, they need that balancing every day one-on-one time with a parent even more.”
Helping parents become their child’s first teacher is paramount to turning around the fiasco of the public education system and the key to raise thriving children. Glynne’s research can be found at http://www.earlyreadingplayschool.com.au/
Public education’s answer to teaching children has been to remove them from their mothers earlier and earlier in order to give them a ‘head start’ in school. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked well. Of course, there are situations where abusive, neglectful, or ignorant parents are not preparing their child’s mind for learning, but these are the exceptions. Universal preschool for all is not the answer.
Rather than merely placing children in preschool, parents must be directly involved in their child’s early education, especially for reading and math. And young children have the extra need of bonding and attachment time with parents, which enhances their learning ability further. Even working mothers like me can find time to help their children’s minds.
The art of continuous improvement is the road to excellence, line upon line, precept on precept, here a little, there a little. In fact, manufacturers are constantly looking for the best practices and improvements to their processes. Can the idea of “best practices” work at home? Certainly! However, continuous improvement does not mean throwing out tried-and-true best practices for new theories. Some new, untried ideas sound good on paper, but do not work in practice.
For example, phonics is the best reading method. Alternate methods that seemed brilliant on paper did more damage than good and greatly increased dyslexia. Another example is writing by cursive penmanship. Public schools have mostly done away with cursive, but maybe the newer methods aren’t always better. Maybe the old ways of learning have more value than meets the eye. The website, Mom.Think.org, posted this finding:
“Scientists are discovering that learning cursive is an important tool for cognitive development, particularly in training the brain to learn ‘functional specialization’ that is capacity for optimal efficiency.”
Whatever the factors, it is clear that parents must not let their children be left to themselves in school, whether that be public, private, or home school. Parents can follow the best practices with their children at home to ensure a great foundation for success. Remember the old saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Enhancing your children’s minds at home is like giving them a mental apple a day. Let’s discover what some of those best practices are. First, the why, then the what and how. See you next time...
http://thegodfreymethod.com
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